“How goes it, little one, with Loup?”
The factor stopped a moment in the sunshine before the cabin of old
France Moline.
Clad in a red skirt, brilliant in its adornment of stained quills of the
porcupine got from the Indians, Francette paced daintily here and there
in the clean-swept yard, now snapping her small fingers, now coaxing
with soft noises in her round throat, her sparkling eyes fixed on the
gaunt grey skeleton that stood on its four feet braced wide apart,
wavering dizzily.
For a time she did not answer, as if he who spoke was no more than any
youth of the settlement, so exaggeratedly absorbed was she.
Then, pushing back the curls from her face, a pretty motion that always
wakened a look of admiration in masculine eyes beholding,--
“If he would only try, M'sieu,” she said, frowning, “but he does nothing
save stand and look at me like that. The strength is gone from his
legs.”
It seemed even as the little maid protested. Massive, silent,
contemptuous, his small eyes under the wolfish skull cold and alight
with a look that sent shuddering from him the timid,--thus he had been
in his hard-fought and hard-won supremacy, a great, mysterious beast
brought full-grown from the snowbound wilderness of the forest one
famine-time by old Aquamis and sold to Bois DesCaut for a tie of
tobacco.
Now he stood, a pitiable shadow, and begged mutely of the only tender
hand he had known for understanding of this strange weakness that took
his limbs and sent the heavens whirling.
McElroy looked long upon him.
“'Tis a shame,” he said, his straight brows drawing together, “the dog
is a better brute than Bois.”
“Aye,” flashed Francette, talking as though it were no uncommon thing
for the factor to stop at the cabin of the Molines, “and no more shall
the one brute serve the other. You have said, M'sieu.”
“Yes,” laughed the factor, “I have said and it shall be so. I will buy
the dog from Bois if he speaks of the matter. Take good care of him,
little one,” and McElroy turned down toward the gate. As he moved away,
free of step and straight as an Indian, he filliped away a small budding
twig of the saskatoon which one of the youths had brought in to show
how the woods were answering the call of the warm sun, and which he had
dandled in his fingers as he walked. It fell at the edge of the beaded
skirt and quick as thought the hand of Francette shot out and covered
it. A hot flush mounted under the silken black curls and she dropped her
eyes, peering under their lashes to see if any observed. She drew the
faded sprig toward her and hid it in her breast.
Before the cabin of the Baptistes, Jean Saville touched his cap and
stopped.
“Yes?” said the factor; “what is it, Jean?”
“Assuredly, M'sieu, has the tide of the spring set in. Pierre but now
reports the coming of a band of strangers down the river. They come in
canoes, five of them, well manned and armed as if the country of the
Assiniboine were bristling with dangers instead of being the abode of
God's chosen. Within the hour they will arrive at the landing.”
“Thank you, Jean,” said McElroy; “I will prepare for the meeting.”
The trapper touched his cap and passed.
“Ah,” smiled the factor to himself, “I like this bustle of passage. It
is good after the winter's housing, and who knows? There may be those
among the strangers who bring word from Hudson Bay.”
He turned briskly back and gave word to Jack de Lancy and his wife
Rette to cook a great meal, also to see that the store-room was cleared
sufficiently by the more orderly packing back of the goods to allow of
five canoe-loads of men sleeping upon the floor. Then he passed down
the main way, out of the gate in the warm sun and took his place at
the landing to look eagerly down stream for the first coming of the
strangers. Not far from the enthusiasm of boyhood was this young factor
of Fort de Seviere.
And within the hour, as Jean had said, they came, rounding the distant
bend in an even distanced string, long narrow craft, each bearing
the regular complement of five men, a bowman, a steersman, and three
middlemen whose paddles shone like crystal as they sank and lifted
evenly. Strangers they were in very truth, as McElroy saw at the first
glance.
Never had they been bred in the wilderness, these men, unless it were
the two guides in the first and fourth canoe, picked out readily by
their swarthy skins, their crimson caps, and their rugged litheness.
Fairer, all, were the rest, paler of skin, more loose of muscle, shown
by the very way they bent to their work. Their garments, too, as they
drew nearer brought a smile to the watcher's lips, a smile of memory.
Those coats, brave in their gilt braid, had assuredly come across seas.
Thus might one behold them on the Strand.
Ah! These were, without doubt, part of the fall ship's load of
adventurers come to the new continent filled with the fire of
achievement and excitement that brought so many youths over seas. They
had, most like, come down from the great bay by way of God's Lake and
the house there, traversed the length of Winnipeg, come along the river
at the southern end, and at last turned westward into the Assiniboine.
A long rest they would no doubt take at Fort de Seviere, and there would
be news of the outside world.
McElroy was at the water's very edge as the first canoe of the string
curved gracefully in and cut slimly up to the landing.
“Welcome, M'sieurs,” called the factor of Fort de Seviere, using
unconsciously the speech of the region, which had become his own in five
years, “in to the right a bit,--so! Well done!”
The word was not so sincere as he would have made it, for the bowman,
jumping out into the knee-deep water to keep the boat from touching
bottom, had floundered like an ox, thereby proving his newness at the
business. On the face of the swarthy Canuck guide who sat in the stern
there was a weary contempt.
“Friends, M'sieurs?” called McElroy tardily, scarcely deeming such
precaution necessary, yet giving the hail from force of habit.
They looked for the most part Scottish, these men, save here and there
among them one who might be anything of the motley that came across each
year.
In the first canoe a figure had risen and stood tall and straight among
the bales of goods with which the craft was seen to be close packed
from bow to stern, a figure striking in its lack of kinship to its
surroundings, yet commanding in its beauty. Garments of cloth, of a gay
blue shade and much adorned with trimming of gold braid, fitted close
to the slender form of the man. His limbs from the knee were encased in
leggings made, most evidently, in some leather shop, while tilted on his
splendid head he wore a hat of so wide a brim that no sunlight touched
either face or throat, while from beneath this covering there fell to
his shoulder long curls of hair that shone like silk. This, evidently,
was the leader of the party.
“Friends,” he said, “bound for the west and the country of the
Saskatchewan.”
For all his appearance he spoke with the accent of the French, and for a
moment McElroy looked closely at him.
“Of the Company?” he asked sharply.
“Aye,” said the other, with a little of wonder in voice and look, “of
the Company, M'sieu most assuredly.”
The momentary flicker of uneasiness that had gripped the factor with the
stranger's speech died at his words.
So, of a surety, why not?
Had not he himself, born in the smoke of a London street, accepted with
the ingenious adaptability of the Irish blood within him the very speech
he now wondered at in the other?
As the young man sprang lightly to land he held out his hand, and it was
gripped with a force that showed the spirit behind the beauty of this
new guest.
“Welcome, M'sieu,” said the factor, “to Fort de Seviere and all it
contains.”
“Bien!” laughed the other with a show of fine white teeth, “but it is
good to behold neighbours in so deadly a wilderness as we have passed
through for these many days. Naught but God-forgotten loneliness and
never-ending forest. Yet it is for these that we barter the comforts
of civilisation, eh, M'sieu, and waste ourselves on solitude and the
savage?” He turned and waved his gloved hand over the five canoes, now
curving one by one in to the landing, and shouted a few terse orders and
commands.
“But I had nigh forgot, so unused am I to society and the usages
thereof,”--he said, turning back with an engaging smile, “Alfred de
Courtenay, known in that world across the water; and which my taste, or
that of itself, more properly speaking, has caused me to forswear for
some length of time, as Mad Alfred, I am, M'sieu--?”
“Anders McElroy,” supplied the other, “and factor of Fort de Seviere.”
“Monsieur le facteur, your servant, of French lineage, English nativity,
and adventurous spirit.”
With a motion indescribably graceful he swept off his wide hat and
executed a bow which in itself was proof of his gentleness.
“And now, M'sieu, lead on to those delights of rest and converse which
your hospitality hath so graciously promised.”
Leaving his company to beach and store for the night the canoes
with their loads of merchandise, under the direction of his aide or
lieutenant whom he introduced to the factor as John Ivrey, a young
man of fine presence, Alfred de Courtenay walked beside McElroy up the
gentle slope of the river bank, entered the great eastern gate of the
post, not without an appreciative glance at its massive strength and
at the well-nigh impregnable thickness of the stockade, the well-placed
surveillance of the towering bastions, and thus up the way between the
cabins to the door of the factory, open and inviting.
“Mother of God, M'sieu!” he said with a copious sigh; “what it is to
meet with white faces! For weeks I have beheld along the shores peering
brown countenances that lifted my gorge, and I have well-nigh been
tempted to turn back.”
“It has been a long journey, then, to you?”
McElroy smiled, thinking of the first impressions and effect of the
wilderness on such a man fresh from the ways of civilisation.
“Long? Though it is my initial journey, yet am I veteran frontiersman.”
He turned upon the factor the brilliance of his smile, a combination of
dazzling teeth and eyes that fairly danced with spirit, like bubbling
wine, blue and swift in their changes from laughter to an exaggerated
dolorousness, as when he spoke of these terrible hardships.
And if they were quick after this fashion they were no less so in
roaming keenly over every corner of the enclosed space within the
stockade.
Before they had reached the factory the stranger knew that there were
three rows of cabins in the post, that the factory was a mighty fortress
in its low solidity, and that the small log structure to the right of it
with the barred window was the pot au beurre.
As they neared the factory the figure of a tall woman, young by the
straightness of the back, the gracious yet taut beauty of line and
curve, came from behind the cabin of the Savilles, and on her shoulder
was perched a three-year-old child which laughed and gurgled with
delight, holding tight to her widespread hands. The woman's face was
hidden by the child's body, but her voice, deep-throated and rich with
sliding minor tones, mingled with the high shrillness of the little
one's shrieks.
“Hold fast, ma cherie,” came its laughing caution, smothered by the
flying folds of the baby's little cotton shift. “See! The ship dips so,
in the ocean,--and so,--and so!”
The strong arms, bare and brown and muscular, swayed backward, throwing
up the milky whiteness of the little throat, the tiny feet flew
heavenward and the baby's wee heart choked it, as witness the screams
of irrepressible joy. As the child swayed back there came into view the
face of Maren Le Moyne, flushed all over its rare darkness, glowing with
tenderness, its great beauty transfigured divinely. The black braids,
wrapped smoothly round her head, shone in the evening sun, and the faded
garment, plain and uncompromising, but served to heighten the effect of
her physical perfection.
Alfred de Courtenay stopped in his tracks, the smile fixed on his face,
and drank in the pretty scene like one starved.
So long he looked that McElroy turned toward him and only then did he
shift his glance, remembering himself, while a blush suffused his rather
delicate features.
“Pardon!” he murmured; “truly do I forget myself, M'sieu; but not for a
twelvemonth have I seen aught to match this moment. I pray you, of what
station of life is the glorious young Madonna before you;--wife or widow
or maid? By Saint Agnes, never have I beheld such beauty!”
“Maid,” replied McElroy; “by name Maren Le Moyne, one of a party of
venturers who came but a short while back from Rainy River, and who have
cast in their lot with us for the matter of a year.”
The woman and the child passed on their way, disappearing again behind
the next cabin, unconscious of observation, still lost in their play of
the tossing ship at sea, and the two men entered the great trading-room
of Fort de Seviere, where Edmonton Ridgar, chief trader and accountant,
came forward to meet the stranger.
The young factor went in search of Jack de Lancy and word of the meal he
had ordered, and for some reason there was within him a vague vexation
which had to do with the look he had seen in the merry eyes of Alfred de
Courtenay.
He found the great kettles boiling over the fires and a ten-gallon pot
of coffee Venting the evening air.
As he gave word for the feast to be spread on strips of cloth laid on
the hard-beaten ground before the factory that many might sit round at
once and partake, there came from the direction of the gate the voices
of De Courtenay's men. The stranger and himself, with young Ivrey and
Ridgar should be served in the little room off to the west where were
the small table, the chairs, and the row of books.
Not often did Fort de Seviere have so illustrious a guest as must be
this young adventurer.